disarm
by AnyLessLost
Summary: he watched her, she who he'd never even kissed at all, reality or fantasy. she who had only let her hand be squeezed in his, fingers cool against his sweaty palms. and he couldn't figure out for the life of him why. one-shot.


ryder can't seem to figure out why his eyes follow the blonde ponytail where ever it goes, curling all the way down to the small of her back.

it's been months- years, actually- since his brain has laced together a complete lucid thought with her name in it. once upon a time, he'd harbored a small crush on the girl. once upon a time, she'd sat catty-cornered to him over plates of pasta and opened her heart to him. once upon a time, he'd felt his gut twist at the sight of her retreating back, his heart rumbled at the dismissive and cool glance of her eyes, his shoulders tensing at the sight of her in celebration, purple dress shimmering in the stage lights as she ran into the wings of a stage. he'd blown it.

that was just one of a million things that had gone wrong that year, and though walking away from glee club had felt like slapping a piece of duct tape on his entire sophomore year and burying him in a coffin deep underground, it also felt like he'd slapped a band-aid on his bruised heart, the good kind that has neosporin in it, to get rid of scars.

he shrugged on a letterman jacket, left his singing for only the car stereo to hear, burned his danny zuko costume for fun, and thrown a couple parties over the summer to erase the glee club's marks on his reputation and that was that. never happened.

and yet, he watched her. he didn't watch marley, who he'd kissed twice in reality and a hundred times in fantasy, or unique, who he'd imagined kissing a million times in his fantasy, when she was katie.

he watched her, she who he'd never even kissed at all, reality or fantasy. she who had only let her hand be squeezed in his, fingers cool against his sweaty palms. and he couldn't figure out for the life of him why.

senior year and she'd changed a little. she'd grown taller, but nowhere near as tall as he knew she wanted to be. she never cut her hair, it only got longer. somehow, she and marley had managed to become inseparable. her list of boyfriends had an additional two or three, but just as the ones before, he didn't approve. he always found reasons, small but important, why none of them were right for her.

sometimes ryder wondered if she knew he watched her. there's no way she could miss it, it was so constant. but no, she must not. she would have told him to stop if she had. she wasn't like other girls who liked being watched. if you stared, she stared back. or glared, which was more likely.

* * *

it hurts. she can feel exactly where he'd hit her, can make a circle with her fingers the size of the area and have it be exact in diameter to the bruise that will be there tomorrow. there's a tiny cut where his fingernail dug into her skin.

the anger hurts worse. it fills her up so much, excess of it comes streaming out of her eyes and throat, making tears swim in her vision and moan of pain fall from her lips. everything in her tells her to hit back, because that's what you do when someone hurts you. some part of her addresses that she should probably run away run away run away, but her survival instincts aren't there. they crapped out on her six years ago, and they crap out on her now. she hears someone behind her but doesn't care. She pounds her fist, which now look tiny, into him, cheat, stomach, arm. logic tells her to go for the nose, the groin, the temple. rage tells her to keep hitting until she can't anymore a thousand times more loudly.

she doesn't remember how old this guy is, or anything about him, and at the moment, can't even remember what made him hit her. she only knows he did. so she doesn't know if he's more likely turn away, call her a bitch, hit her back, pin her to the ground, gather both wrists in one hand, press his knees into her stomach until she's so out of hair she can't even get a good glimpse of the guy.

he screws up his face, extends his arms, making them a connection from his shoulders to hers until the force of his shove makes her take one two stumbles back. and then someone brushes by her, his side accidentally bumping into her and making her stagger to the right this time. she holds onto the side of the car to catch her balance and swings her hair out of her eyes just in time to see the boy get taken to the ground by ryder lynn. a memory tickles at her brain, this happening in glee club as he tackles jake into a set of drums (or maybe it's the other way around), ryder passing marley to the side by the waist before he stomped right up to jake all because kitty has bumped her in the hip. for a moment, she almost smiles, because even though ryder's spent the past couple of years being the goody-goody all-american jock, he's still drawn into a fight like a fly to a florescence.

before she knows it, he's in her face. no, touching her face, the cut right under her eye. she jerks away before she even has a second to think about it. you can't just touch someone who was just getting punched five seconds ago, she tells him, but only in her mind because she's still trying to get back to the present.

and because she is still in the choir room, hearing sugar's scream, still hearing the crash of the symbol, she can't explain herself, so she just turns and walks away.

* * *

there it is. her retreating back, though it's a little different this time. she's not in her cheerios uniform this time, and her hair's down. a tiny triangle of her back is visible out of the cut-out part of her dress, right where the arch of it is. she doesn't seem upset, or even like the punch or the push or the scrape hurts at all. so he follows her.

"hey, who the hell was that guy?"

she sighs. he's not sure if he's ever really heard her do that before. "don't know."

"why did he hit you?"

"abusive past? psychopathic tendencies? probably extreme misogynistic views."

he's not really sure how she's able to throw out big words like that when he saw her drink three solos cups of beer, but that's kitty for you. he doesn't say anything for a minute and she seems to grow uncomfortable with the silence.

as if she could read his mind, she says "if i hadn't had a beer, you would've been pulling me off of him."

it's like she needs to seem tougher than she even did before, when he was pretty sure he'd never seen anything tougher than the gleam in her eyes before she launched her body forward and started to pummel the guy with her fists. "you had three beers," he corrects her before he can think about it.

she stops walking for a moment, gives him a look like _he_ may be the one with psychopathic tendencies, then starts again. she's at her car before he realizes that's where she's going and she opens the door, only to have it slapped out of her hand as he closes it.

"you've been drinking."

"yeah, we've established that," she agrees, and then reaches for the door handle and fixes him with a look. "i can drive."

"let me."

"i don't think so," she says, and this tone is precisely the same as it was two years prior. too similar to be accidental. and it tears at him in a way that makes him question whether or not he may have psychopathic tendencies, so his hand slacks from the door. she's sober enough.

* * *

"your knuckles are bruised." she doesn't even look at him as her locker creaks open.

"punch an idiot, yours will be too."

kitty's retreating back, ponytail curling down.

* * *

because he's a coward, he talks to her in a way where she can't turn away from him. at least not literally.

**r u ignoring me bcause i blew you off in soph year?**

_kitty wilde is typing…_ his heart skips. _kitty wilde is typing…_

she stops typing, for a full minute, and he thinks she just backspaced everything and pushed him out of her mind for the thousandth time. and then:

**no.**

and because of that full minute, he smiles, and types:

**liar.**

because he knows she can't back down from that.

and then kitty wilde is typing for what seems like an eternity or four eternities, and then she says:

**i told you and only you. i don't care if you didn't want to date me. i don't care if you blew me off one time in sophomore year. you quit glee club and you never spoke to me again. you were the one who understood.**

and this seems worse than her retreating back, the raw truth. he feels like shit. he has a feeling if he told her so, she'd say **good**. it doesn't matter anyways. _kitty wilde is offline_.

* * *

they're supposed to be taking their sat's, but the rain is pounding on the windows so loudly no one can think. and then the lights go out and for whatever god forsaken reason, ryder's eyes find hers and she looks back. does he imagine remembering the way her fingers had brushed by his hand as he left her side during the shooting? they cancel the testing. kitty wonders why the hell it took them so damn long and is the first to make it out of the door.

ryder's sluggish, mind lost, lost, lost. but he'd either somehow sped up or she's slowed down, because there it is. her back to him. her hair is down again, and she's wearing a green jacket.

there is such a feeling that comes over him. emotion. it feels like one of the lightning bolts from outside made it inside and struck him good, making his heart pulsate like a tuning fork. by the time he makes it to her, he's pretty sure he's shaking.

"i'm sorry." he says and she turns out of sheer surprise because she's pretty sure he's the only one who's ever actually said those words to her before. "i'm sorry i didn't keep in touch. i didn't think you'd want to, even though i did. i should have anyways."

her face is blank, so he continues and says more things she's pretty sure no ones ever told her before. "you were right. about the catfish, about everything, about me. i was an idiot, and i shouldn't have… i just shouldn't have done any of the stuff i did to you. i've wondered this entire time why I couldn't get you out of my head and it's because i owed you something, and i was too stupid to realize it was a simple thank you."

she lifts a shoulder, tries to fake indifference. "so what do you owe me, then?"

"the truth. you've given me nothing but the truth, kitty, and i could never tell you that i kicked myself every second after you walked out of that library. i never told you that you'd become my fantasy instead."

it's silent for a moment, and thunder rumbles outside. he takes one step forward, so she takes two until their too close to feign chasteness.

he wants to kiss her, and he's pretty sure her lips would taste like pomegranates, but that's something that would happen if they were other people. plus, he knows she expects him to. instead, he puts his hand to her face, touches the scar just underneath her eye, takes her hand again, and brings her wrist to his mouth. he presses his lips to it, counts her heartbeats until he can sync his breathing with it. it maybe would be awkward if it weren't for her smile letting him know he'd finally done the right things.


End file.
